The 7 Times Batman Died
by Triscribe
Summary: ... or at least that's what the criminals thought, up until he reappeared and scared the living daylights out of them. A look at the various cowl-bearers of my Glimpses Futureverse: Bruce, Dick, Damian, Jack, Alf, Terry, and Tom.


1 - Bruce Wayne

Getting trapped inside the warehouse on the docks was a rookie move. Getting trapped inside with a package of dynamite about to go off was just plain _stupid._ He ran to the farthest edge of the building from the explosive, and rather than waste time trying to get through the reinforced wall, Batman drove his boots down at the wooden floor.

 _Less than fifteen seconds now..._

Normally he'd tried to disarm the bomb, but it was in plain sight of the warehouse's lone window through which the crooks who'd managed to lock him in here were watching with a sniper rifle. So, Batman's second option was to try getting down and into the water before he died by fiery immolation.

 _Five seconds..._

 _Four..._

 _Three..._

A cracking, splintering sound filled the warehouse.

 _Two..._

 **Splash!**

 _One..._

 _ **BOOM!**_

Outside, the professional mercenaries congratulated themselves on a job well done - the boss would triple their salaries for pulling off the job while getting rid of the Bat at the same time.

"Once we report in, drinks are on me t'night, boys!" Their group leader announced, setting off another round of cheers. He turned around, about to order them to head back to the car, when a terrifying sight met the man's eyes.

A tall figure, shrouded in darkness and mist, stood at the end of the path, and the mercenary felt a shiver of fear at the dire glower directed straight at _him._

"B-but- you _died-"_

"Guess what." The Batman growled, stalking closer as he intimidated the entire group. "Gotham is full of ghosts."

A few minutes later, all six men had been taken down, cuffed together, their weapons thrown into the bay's freezing waters. Once he called the success in to Commissioner Gordon, Batman headed back to where he'd parked the car, still dripping wet. Fortunately, he kept some spare towels in the trunk... And Alfred would hopefully have a hot drink and warm bath waiting for him.

2 - Dick Grayson

Typical. He took one metal pipe to the back of the head, and next he knew, the hired thugs thought they'd tie Batman up with chains and throw him off the side of the skyscraper. One of them even made the standard, terrible joke of seeing if a bat could still fly with its wings cut.

Oracle would never let him hear the end of it.

Still, thanks to the position his hands were in, the man was able to activate the emergency beacon for the plane. So when the thugs pitched him off the side of a two hundred story building, Batman only fell about three floors before landing squarely on the roof of his jet. After a few moments of fiddling, he was also able to pull out the laser cutter kept in his belt.

Entering the elevator, two of the three thugs were pretty satisfied with themselves.

"You think he coulda gotten out?" The smallest of them was still antsy about the whole thing, though.

"'Course not, guy couldn't even see straight after that knock-out blow he took." Another of them slung an arm around the shorter man's shoulders. "If it'll make ya feel better, we'll go check for Bat-sized splatters on the sidewalk, 'kay."

"Y-yeah, okay, that's-" His words were cut off with a gasp as the elevator arrived on the bottom floor, opening with a ding to reveal a smirking Batman.

"Evening, gentlemen," he growled at them, entering the small space. "Going up?"

3 - Damian Wayne

It wasn't evil plants, or monstrous mutants, or even an Arkham breakout. No, Batman had to be brought low by a pair of teenage idiots fooling around extreme vandalism, who managed to bring down an entire department store around his ears.

If any of the family got wind of this, it would be as though a bomb of Joker's laughing gas had been unleashed in the Cave.

Growling softly, the Gotham hero started to dig at the rubble keeping him pinned.

Standing a few feet away from where the debris of their explosion had settled, the two boys gaped at what their make-shift bombs had done.

"Dude..."

"I know."

"We... We brought the whole place down."

"I _know."_

"Dude... The _Bat_ was in there."

The two of them shared a look, before whooping the same cheer. " _AWESOME!"_

"We could be, like, heroes to the entire underworld!"

"I know!"

"I think not," a third voice snarled, and the pair of teens froze. When they slowly turned their heads upwards, it was to see the terrible sight of a grey and black figure standing hunched at the very top of the rubble pile, pale moonlight behind him illuminating the man's massive size.

Thirty seconds later, after the young idiots had screamed and tried to bolt, only to knock themselves out running headfirst into a concrete wall, Batman summoned the car, and idly wondered if he'd be able to avoid explaining to his family why he was covered from head to toe in dust and grit. Doubtful, but a man could hope.

4 - Jack Drake

He'd heard plenty of stories over the years - from his dad, his aunts and uncles, even Grandfather - about the sometimes demeaning states members of the Bat family would find themselves in. Their advice had always been to play along, occasionally even allowing your enemies to think they'd won, so long as it would provide you with a golden opportunity for a surprise attack.

Which was why, in his second month of covering for Uncle Damian (stuck fighting in a war on an alien planet as part of a League mission gone wrong), the fourth Batman found himself playing possum.

Special upgrades made to the suit meant that, when he found himself cornered by three women with machine guns, the man was able to fake being riddled with more holes than Swiss cheese. He jerked with uncontrollable spasms before collapsing to the floor, a pool of fake blood spreading out around him from the new bullet holes in his suit.

Cautiously, the women approached, one of them even daring to nudge Batman's apparent corpse with her foot. "Well, ladies," she said in a breathless tone. "I guess all it really took to down the Bat was some good-old girl power!"

"Figures." Another of them smirked, while the third remained suspicious.

"It can't have been that easy." Setting her gun aside, the woman crouched and reached for Batman's cowl. "My dad went up against the first Bat back in the day, and said that if you can't check for a pulse-"

A gloved hand snapped up to grasp her wrist, and a second later the woman was flying into her companions, knocking all three of them to the ground in a daze.

"-then you can't believe he's dead." Batman finished for her, getting to his feet and wiping away a few smears of the fake blood. "Y'know, my grandfather has often said the same thing."

5 - Alf Wayne

There were many times, during his first few years as the new Batman, that the young man wondered why he'd had to be sick during the time of the Ultra Bomb Disaster - kept at home, spared from death unlike so many of his older family members. Grandfather and the others had to remind him that it was because Gotham needed a Batman - that, indeed, it was looking more and more like the entire world would need a Batman soon enough.

He remained because it was his destiny, his duty to serve as Batman.

He did _not_ remain only to end up being knocked into a pit at an abandoned construction site and squashed by a falling pile of steel girders.

The massive stack of beams settled, and the Jokerz gathered close to one another, staring in awe at their handiwork.

"Do- do you think we actually did it? Offed the Bat?" One of the more petite girls asked in a hushed tone. The group's leader, a teen with ripped clothing and green dyed hair, started to answer her, but a voice from behind them interrupted.

"No, I don't think you did."

Not long afterward, the Jokerz had all been subdued, and Batman was once again grateful that, even if he hadn't inherited his mother's super speed, he still had his 'emergency teleportation' metahuman ability. And this time, using it hadn't resulted in the destruction of the plane, so none of the family could fuss at him, either.

6 - Terry McGinnis

He'd seen firsthand for years all the rough situations being Batman put his foster dad into. So why should it be surprising in the slightest that his very first night with the cowl on resulted in the young man being stuck inside a burning building?

Surrounded by flames on all sides with falling wreckage getting closer and closer, Batman did the first thing that came to mind: he went up.

Down on the street below, half a dozen gunmen were waiting by the building's sole remaining exit, where their leader was sure the Bat would appear from.

"What if he don't show?" Another asked.

"Then that means he got all crispy-crittered, and we won't hafta waste th' ammo." Gripping their weapons even more tightly, the group focused their entire attention on the doorway. If any had been looking up, they would have seen a dark figure suddenly appear over the top of the building, hovering on concentrated flames emerging from the bottom of his boots. Once the rockets cut out, Batman fired a grappling line, and swung down, headed straight for the group of gunmen...

The following fight didn't even last a full minute. Wiping soot from his suit and activating the summoning beacon for the car, the Gotham hero smirked as he contemplated how best to point out to Alf and the Old Man that the rocket boots _hadn't_ been such a stupid idea after all.

7 - Tom Wayne

Batman wondered, not for the first time, how he'd managed to wind up in this mess: trapped inside a warehouse by the spaceport docks, a massive bomb about to go off, and no easy way out. For a moment, he was eerily reminded of a story his great-grandfather had once shared with him, something about escaping by going down through the floor and into a convenient body of water. Well, that wouldn't work in this situation, but it did give the man an idea.

Pulling out a small vial of fast-working acid, Batman melted out a fair sized hole in the concrete floor. Once it was big enough for him to fit inside, he used a grappling line to snare one of the stacks of titanium sheets, automatic winch pulling the entire pallet over to him.

Waiting anxiously outside, the gathering of five hired muscle waited anxiously. They all let out a sigh of relief when the bomb finally exploded, turning the entire warehouse into one big slag heap.

"Okay, we can't rest just yet." Their leader announced. "We won't get paid unless we bring the boss the Bat's head, got it?" The five of them started towards the burning mess, already pulling on heat-resistant gear to aid their search.

But by the time they reached the edge of the wreckage, it started to tremble and shake. To the crooks' shared astonishment, a terrifying figure rose up out of the rubble and flame, black cape fluttering as he glared down at them.

"B-but- we got you! Dead as a doornail!" One of them cried in despair.

The Batman of Gotham merely smiled, which scared them even more. "Don't you know by now," he growled, "That we Bats can't be killed by the likes of you?"


End file.
